from the quite-a-patent-thicket dept

A few years ago, we wrote up a story about a patent fight concerning force feedback technology used in "cybersex" or "teledildonics." That case involved two patents from famed haptics company Immersion (5,889,672 and 6,275,213) which was involved in a bit of a legal fight with a company called Internet Services. The details suggested that Immersion -- who was famous for pioneering things like "force feedback" in video game controllers -- had licensed its patents to Internet Services, so that it could use them in the virtual sex space (also known as "teledildonics" -- you can figure it out). Immersion felt that it might not look good for an upstanding company such as itself to be involved in such a business, hence the licensing.

Well... now it appears that some others are claiming teledildonics patents, and they're not at all happy with Internet Services. Apparently a company called New Frontier Technologies, which licensed a patent (6,368,268 -- "method and device for interactive virtual control of sexual aids using digital computer networks," -- and you shouldn't miss the (possibly NSFW) flow charts on pages 5 and 6 of the patent) from another company, Hassex, is suing Internet Services for violating that patent with its "Real Touch" masturbation tool. Of course, it will be interesting to see if Internet Services fires back with the Immersion patents that it licensed.

In the meantime, this all brings new meaning to the concept of innovation happening when ideas have sex.

from the patent-dealing dept

Apparently this is the week for force feedback "haptics" company Immersion to settle its various patent lawsuits. We already noted the infamous teledildonics case has been settled and now it's settled an ongoing lawsuit with Microsoft as well. We wrote about the details back in May. It's a case that highlights just how wasteful some patent lawsuits can be.

In this case, Immersion had sued both Sony and Microsoft for violating its patents, and it offered them a deal that's becoming all too typical: giving competitors a chance to settle first in order to join the other side of the case. It's a neat trick. Basically, you tell both sides that they can just pay up, and close out the case, while also getting the chance to claim some of that money back if Immersion wins against their competitor. Of course, Immersion took it to another level after Microsoft agreed to this deal, originally handing over to Immersion $26 million. After it got Sony to pay $130 million, it told Microsoft that the deal wasn't technically a "settlement," and thus it was excluded from the terms of the deal it gave Microsoft. Hence the lawsuit from Microsoft.

This latest settlement has Immersion apparently realizing it was never going to win the case, and forking over $20.75 million back to Microsoft, ostensibly from its winnings against Sony. It makes you wonder what's up that Immersion seems to be rushing to settle its various cases. Either way, it shows another aspect of how the patent abuse game is played these days, with patent holders pitting competitors against each other to pressure companies into settling.

from the left-out-the-interesting-part dept

The Associated Press has a short blurb about how haptics company and aggressive patent holder Immersion has settled its lawsuit with Internet Services LLC. Oddly, the AP report leaves out the details of the case -- which were pretty interesting -- preferring to make it sound like a generic patent lawsuit. The case, which we wrote about a few months back, involved questions over whether or not Immersion owed Internet Services money from Immersion's patent settlement with Sony.

You see, Immersion licenses "haptics" technology, which may be better known as "force feedback" technology -- the stuff that makes your video game controller vibrate when you drive your virtual car off the track in that racing game, for example. Immersion realized that such force feedback technology would also have a market in the porn world -- but apparently didn't want to sully its own name by associating with that world. So, instead, it licensed the right to enforce its patents in the "cybersex" and "teledildonics" to Internet Services. Then Immersion still gets the money but doesn't have to be seen as shaking down porn purveyors. The problem, though, was that Internet Services believed that the Sony PlayStation could be used for "cybersex" purposes as well as for straight gaming -- and thus, it felt cut out of Immersion's settlement with Sony.

And, from there, the fight was on -- and it got even more interesting earlier this year when the famed patent lawyer that Internet Services had hired to represent it against Immersion tried to quit -- and Internet Services went to court to require him to stay on the case. There's no word on the details of the settlement, but it's rather surprising that the AP would take this case and leave out most of the more interesting details.

from the ah,-patent-law dept

A few weeks back, we wrote about how Immersion was involved in a bizarre lawsuit involving a firm focused on the "teledildonics" market (look it up -- or, actually, you're probably better off not). Immersion, of course, is well known in the tech world for holding a bunch of patents on "haptic" technology, which many people are more familiar with as "force feedback" in devices like video game controllers. Immersion is not afraid to use its patents and has been involved in numerous lawsuits -- with the big one yielding $130 million from Sony for the force feedback controllers used in the PlayStation. The case mentioned a few weeks ago involved a shell firm that Immersion had done a deal with. Since Immersion didn't want to smear its own name by suing companies involved in force feedback sex devices, it basically licensed the legal rights out to this shell company. However, that shell company felt that Immersion owed it some of the $130 million Sony booty.

While the case with the shell company has now been dismissed, Joe Mullin notes an even more interesting case: Microsoft is also demanding a large cut of the Sony settlement money. Here's where things get tricky. Basically, Immersion had sued Microsoft as well for violating the patents. But, as we've seen other companies do, part of the settlement terms between Immersion and Microsoft are that Microsoft would join the patent battle against Sony and get a cut of any settlement money that came out of that lawsuit. In effect, rather than just paying up to license the patent, Microsoft switched sides in the lawsuit.

However, Immersion used some sneaky tricks to skirt around its agreement with Microsoft -- most specifically never referring to its deal with Sony as a "settlement." Thus, it claimed that it doesn't owe a dime to Microsoft (some thanks Microsoft got for paying up, huh?). So now Microsoft has sued, though muddling the whole case is the fact that in filing the lawsuit, Microsoft released some confidential info, which caused Immersion to sue Microsoft as well. And just think, folks, all this money being spent on lawyers could actually have gone into making better game controllers. But who wants to do that when there are more lawyers to pay?

from the cybersex-it-is dept

Joe Mullin has the details of a rather bizarre patent dispute involving a patent covering the user interface of force feedback technology used in "cybersex" or "teledildonics." You may have heard of the company Immersion, which, for years, has claimed to hold pretty much all patents on "haptic" technology, which most people are familiar with in the form of "force feedback" game controllers for console games. Some feel that Immersion's patents are overly broad, but that's beside the point on this one. Apparently, at some point, Immersion realized that there was going to be (or already was) a decent sized market in using such haptic technology for virtual sex. Yet, at the same time, the company felt uncomfortable about filing infringement lawsuits on such uses, recognizing that it could lead to negative publicity. So, instead, it licensed out the patents and the right to sue for infringement to a company called Internet Services, LLC (ISLLC), which (from the description in Mullin's article) sounds like a shell company just for this purpose.

However, when Immersion won its patent infringement lawsuit against Sony for its use of force feedback controllers on Sony gaming consoles, ISLLC apparently felt that Immersion owed it some of the proceeds. It hired famed patent attorney (and patent system expert) Mark Lemley to represent it. However, for somewhat unclear reasons, Lemley now appears to want nothing whatsoever to do with ISLLC and has asked to withdraw from the case. ISLLC has now hired other lawyers just to force Lemley to still represent it in its lawsuit against Immersion. It's like a patent battle soap opera -- complete with sex toys. See, just because stories are about patents, doesn't mean that they're not sexy.